Our View: Florida’s tussle over textbooks

Published: Friday, April 11, 2014 at 02:32 PM.

Some state senators want to throw the book at local school districts. The textbook, that is. A bill making its way through the Florida Senate would end the state Department of Education’s role in reviewing and selecting students’ textbooks and toss that responsibility to local officials, whether they want it or not.

And some of them don’t. Their objections are a reversal of the standard complaint that school boards don’t have enough local control over education. In this instance, they’re happy to have the state do the heavy lifting.

Which it does. The DOE selects textbooks that meet its criteria for different classes, and communities choose from among those books. The Senate bill (SB 864) would eliminate the state review.

Not so fast, says the Florida School Board Association, which wants the DOE to keep doing what it’s doing. Shifting the textbook-picking task to local school boards, says Ruth Melton, the group’s director of government relations, would be “an incredible unfunded mandate on school districts.”

The Florida Parent Teacher Association backed the Senate bill early on, then changed its mind. Now it, too, opposes the legislation.

Luckily for both organizations, there’s a backup plan. A House bill (HB 921) says local school districts can set up a process to choose their own textbooks if they want to. It would be optional. But if they do so, the textbooks still must meet state standards.

That sounds like a reasonable alternative to the Senate’s make-the-locals-do-it approach.

Some state senators want to throw the book at local school districts. The textbook, that is. A bill making its way through the Florida Senate would end the state Department of Education’s role in reviewing and selecting students’ textbooks and toss that responsibility to local officials, whether they want it or not.

And some of them don’t. Their objections are a reversal of the standard complaint that school boards don’t have enough local control over education. In this instance, they’re happy to have the state do the heavy lifting.

Which it does. The DOE selects textbooks that meet its criteria for different classes, and communities choose from among those books. The Senate bill (SB 864) would eliminate the state review.

Not so fast, says the Florida School Board Association, which wants the DOE to keep doing what it’s doing. Shifting the textbook-picking task to local school boards, says Ruth Melton, the group’s director of government relations, would be “an incredible unfunded mandate on school districts.”

The Florida Parent Teacher Association backed the Senate bill early on, then changed its mind. Now it, too, opposes the legislation.

Luckily for both organizations, there’s a backup plan. A House bill (HB 921) says local school districts can set up a process to choose their own textbooks if they want to. It would be optional. But if they do so, the textbooks still must meet state standards.

That sounds like a reasonable alternative to the Senate’s make-the-locals-do-it approach.

This also sounds reasonable: Both bills would allow school districts to team up to review textbooks. This should ease the concern, especially among smaller school districts, that the review process would be too expensive.

The House bill is sponsored by Rep. Matt Gaetz of Fort Walton Beach. “I think there’s an increasing frustration by parents in our state,” he told Halifax Media Services, “that they don’t have a lot of say regarding the content and materials their children use in the classroom.”

Just so. That’s why it seems hypocritical for school officials to complain about a lack of local control and then whine about being given authority to choose textbooks at the local level.

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